We might eliminate all proof of ill-treatment, overlook the starvation and beatings and other barbarous acts, but the admitted fact of slavery - compulsory uncompensated labor - would still remain. There is no such thing as benevolent slavery. Involuntary servitude, even if tempered by humane treatment, is still slavery.
The extent of the deportation of eastern civilian laborers and the ruthless manner in which they were seized and abducted has been related in detail in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal (pp. 243-247, Official Edition). To repeat the shocking story in the judgment in this case would serve no useful purpose. It is sufficient simply to state that it has been repeatedly and conclusively proved before this and other Tribunals that about 5,000,000 men, women and children were violently seized and forcibly deported as slaves. As to the systematic extermination of the Jews, the International Military Tribunal has found (pp. 247-252, Official Edition) that, in pursuance of a fanatical public policy, it was deliberately decided to exterminate an entire race of human beings. There is no way to determine the total number of Jews who were killed, but in testimony before the International Military Tribunal it was stated that one military group operating in the East killed 90,000 people in one year and another group killed 135,000 Jews and Communists in the first four months of the program. With these findings of fact by the International Military Tribunal this court is in full accord and dopts them as found facts in the present case.
MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS The fact that criminal medical experiments were performed upon the involuntary inmates of concentration camps has been repeatedly proved and determined before these Tribunals, in the case of United States vs.
Karl Brandt, et al. (Tribunal I), in the case of United States vs. Erhard Milch, tried before this Tribunal, and by ample and convincing proof in the instant case. To completely document this finding of fact would result in unduly prolonging this judgment.
It is sufficient to state that the performance of such criminal medical experiments has not been seriously denied. Defendants have unanimously denied knowledge of or participation in such experiments, but the proof of their performance stands substantially uncontradicted. The names of Dr. Rascher, Dr. Grawitz and Dr. Beigelboeck have become infamous. The concentration camps furnished an unlimited supply of human subjects for these barbarous experiments, and inmates in large numbers were compelled to submit to so-called scientific tests which invariably involved torture and in thousands of cases maiming, disfigurement and death. Inmates were placed in tanks, where the air pressure was decreased in simulation of high altitudes. A careful chart was kept of their violent reactions, which indicated intense pain and suffering. The chart not infrequently ended with, "Subject died at 9:18". Others were exposed naked to freezing temperatures for hours, aided by ice-water immersion. As was to be expected, many subjects froze to death. Others were compelled to drink sea-water until they went mad from thirst. Inmates were exposed to artificial inoculation of yellow fever, cholera, malaria, typhus and spotted fever, and hundreds died as a result. Incisions were made in the legs of subjects and the development of gangrene accelerated by the introduction of septic foreign matter. Poison gas, mustard gas, phosphorous and sulphur were used on inmates in order to prove that these chemicals are dangerous and often fatal - by no means a novel scientific finding. This is but a part of the horrible inventory. As one means toward "a final solution of the Jewish problem," a program of wholesale sterilization of the Jews was instituted and various methods by which sterility could be accomplished without the knowledge of the victim were devised. Even deliberate castration was resorted to.
EUTHANASIA The wholesale extermination of those inmates who for any reason had become economically valueless to the Reich was accomplished by the euthanasia program.
This plan was originally adopted to dispose of the insane, but it was expanded to include the incurables, the aged, the "idle caters", the habitual criminals, and finally the political irreconcilables. It was a national Reich-approved plan for deliberate and premeditated murder on a large scale. Elaborate case histories of inmates were prepared and screened at the camps by traveling physicians, who by a process of snap judgment determined whether men and women should live or die. Those whose records happened to fall in the extermination file were shipped, like cattle to market, to an institution at Bernberg where "Action 14 f 13" was applied. This often was done by the injection of phenol or gasoline into the bloodstream, causing immediate death. After the extermination, the victim's personal effects, including the gold in his teeth, were shipped back to the concentration camp and a report of "death from natural causes" was made out. This program was also extensively carried out directly in the concentration camps by the camp physicians.
TREATMENT OF CONCENTRATION CAMP PRISONERS The only interest which the SS and the Reich had in concentration camp inmates was as productive units.
They were regarded as so many machines, not as human beings. The only concern with the collapse or death of an inmate was with the loss of a productive laborer. Their arrogant attitude that all non-Germans were sub-humans made them wholly indifferent to the fate of those whose right to live out their lives was as sacred as that of any German. This attitude was epitomized by Himmler when he said:
"Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished."
And later, at Posen, in October 1943, he said:
"At that time we did not value the mass of humanity as we value it today, as raw material, as labor. What, after all, thinking in terms of generations, is not to be regretted, but is now deplorable by reason of the loss of labor, is that the prisoners died in tens and hundreds of thousands of exhaustion and hunger."
When grinders or lathes broke down under hard use, they were scrapped; when inmates collapsed from exhaustion or hunger, they were shot or gassed.
There was nothing incongruous in this to the twisted Nazi Psychology. They talked and wrote frankly and voluably about it. True, there were some who professed a humanitarian interest in the welfare and comfort of the inmates and who made some effort to alleviate their intolerable condition, but they still kept them hard at work. Tasks were found even for the bedridden, while they awaited their turn at the gas chambers. The ghastly story of Germany's mistreatment of the millions of slaves who filled her concentration camps to bursting - the endless hours of exhausting labor, the beatings and killings, the starvation, the degradation - this has become stale from retelling. That's the pity of it. It can be so soon forgotten. But let it be recorded here once more, for generations unborn to read and ponder, that millions of human beings between 1939 and 1945 were cast into slavery and treated with inhuman cruelty by a nation whose only excuse was economic need - the Nazi credo of "the state above humanity."
The story has come to the Tribunal from the lips of witnesses who personally experienced the horrors of the concentration camps -
Victor Abend - Polish inmate of three camps Barnhard Lauber - Polish inmate of two camps Jerzy Bielski - Polish inmate of two camps Henry Kruse -- German inmate at Neuengamme Chaim Balizki - Polish inmate of two camps Herbert Engler - German inmate of Sachenhausen Eugen Kogen - Austrian inmate of Buchenwald Josef Ackerman - German inmate of two camps Wolfgang Sanner - German inmate of Mauthausen Franz Mis - Yugoslav inmate of Dachau Helmut Beckel - German inmate of two camps We have had proof from camp commanders and physicians Karl Kahr - Doctor at Dachau, Buchenwald and Nordhausen Otto Barnewald - Administrative Chief at Mauthausen, Neuengamme and Buchenwald Hermann Pister - Commandant at Buchenwald Gerhard Schiedlausky - Doctor at Mauthausen, Natzweiler and Buchenwald Max Pauly - Commandant at Neuengamme Rudolf Hoess - Commandant at Auschwitz.
Phillip Grimm - Commandant at Buchenwald We have seen the motion pictures of the frightful conditions in some of the camps when they were captured by the Allies - conditions so ghastly that they defy description.
The proof is overwhelming that in the administration of the concentration camps the German war machine, and first and foremost the SS, resorted to practices which would shame the most primitive race of savage barbarians. All the instincts of human decency which distinguish men from beasts were forgotten and the law of the jungle took command. If there is such a thing as a crime against humanity, here we have it repeated a million times over.
TREATMENT OF THE JEWS This disgraceful chapter in the history of Germany has been vividly portrayed in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal (pp.
247-253, 303, Official Edition). Nothing can be added to that comprehensive finding of facts, in which this Tribunal completely concurs. From it we see the unholy spectacle of six million human beings deliberately exterminated by a civilized state whose part of the world of forebears whom the murderers detested.
Never before in history has man's inhumanity to man reached such depths. Had Germany rested content with the exclusion of Jews from her own territory, with denying them German citizenship, with excluding them from public office, or any like domestic regulation, no other nation could have been heard to complain. But such prejudice and hatred, once fanned into flame, is difficult to control. And so, when the Nuernberg decrees against the Jews were pronounced, the fuse was lighted and seen the program of world-wide pronounced, the fuse was lighted and seen the program of world-wide extermination of Jews was launched. Had Germany not been checked, one wonders what race or creed or nation would next have been branded as sub-human and marked for extermination.
In his own affidavit of April 1, 1947 (Ex. 523), Pohl states:
"The liquidation in the Auschwitz concentration camp in the years 1942 and 1943, when Rudolf Hoess was commander, was known to me through Himmler's speech, and I myself also saw the gas chambers and the crematorium in Auschwitz in the summer of 1944."
The most lurid descriptions of the Jewish extermination program are found in the reports of German officers themselves, in which, it can be assumed, the cruelties and atrocities are not exaggerated. Lieutenant General of Police Katzman, reporting with evident pride in June 1943 on progress in murder in Galacia, writes:
"I report that the District of Galacia with the exception of those Jews in the camps under the control of the SS and Police is free Jews. Jews still caught small numbers are given special treatment by the competent detachments of police.
"Up to June 1943, 434,329 Jews have been evacuated. 21,156 are still in concentration camps. This number is being reduced 'currently.'
"Since we received more and more alarming reports on the Jews becoming armed in an ever increasing manner, we started during the last fortnight in June 1943 an action throughout the whole of the district of Galicia with the intent to use strongest measures to destroy the Jewish gangsterdom. Special measures were found necessary during the action to dissolve the Ghetto in Lwow where the dugouts mentioned above had been established. Here we had to act brutally from the beginning, in order to avoid losses on our side; we had to blow up or to burn down several houses. On this occasion the surprising fact arose that we were able to catch about 20,000 Jews instead of 12,000 Jews who had registered. We had to pull at least 3,000 Jewish corpses out of every kind of hiding places; they had committed suicide by taking poison."
The "special treatment" referred to means slaughter on the spot. The periodic reports of Stroop, SS Brigadefuehrer and Major General of Police, who was charged with the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, portray an astounding adventure in wholesale murder and robbery, ending with the terse statement, "There is no Jewish ghetto in Warsaw any more." The action terminated, he says, by blowing up the Warsaw synagogue. He then submits an inventory of his victims: 56,065 Jews exterminated plus an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 destroyed by being blown up or dying in burning buildings. 4,400,000 zlotys (Polish units of currency) seized and counted, with five to six million more uncounted. Also gold and paper money and large amounts of jewelry are listed. What strange mental twist induces this man to constantly refer to the inmates of the ghetto as "bandits"? The German Inspector of Armament in the Ukraine reports in December 1941:
".....later specially detached formations of the police executed a planned shooting of Jews. It was done entirely in public .... and in many instances with members of the armed forces taking part voluntarily. The way these actions, which included men, old men, women and children of all ages, were carried out was horrible. So far about fifteen to twenty thousand Jews have been executed in the part of the Ukraine belonging to the Reich."
In October 1941, Reich Commissioner Carl for the Territory of Sluzk, reports:
"The town itself offered a picture of horror during the action. With indescribable brutality.......the Jewish people were taken out of their dwellings and herded together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. .....The police battalion has looted during the action in an unheard of manner.... Everything of use such as boots, leather, cloth, gold and other valuables has been taken away."
The Tribunal is quite willing to accept these statements of these high-ranking German officers, who were eye-witnesses, as conclusive proof of the facts related.
LOOTING OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROPERTY The story of systematic pillage of occupied countries is related in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal (pp.
238-243, Official Edition), which this Tribunal adopts as findings of fact in this case. It is a tale of ruthless depravity unequalled in history. It was not confined to looting by individuals or isolated detachments. It was the carrying out of a general military policy, announced by the top command at the outset of the war. As early as October 1939, Goering issued the following directive:
"The task for the economic treatment of the various administrative regions is different, depending on whether the country which is involved will be incorporated politically into the German Reich, or whether we will deal with the Government-General, which in all probability will not be made a part of Germany. In the first mentioned territories, the....safeguarding of all their productive facilities and supplies must be aimed at, as well as a complete incorporation into the Greater German economic system, at the earliest possible time. On the other hand, there must be removed from the territories of the Government-General all raw materials, scrap materials, machines, etc., which are of use for the German war economy. Enterprises which are not absolutely necessary for the meager maintenance of the naked existence of the population must be transferred to Germany............."
In pursuance of this policy of deliberate plunder, Poland, the Ukraine and the occupied parts of Russia were stripped of agricultural supplies, food, raw materials, manufactured articles and such machinery as could not be used for German purposes where it stood. Obviously, this left large numbers of the population of these countries to starve, a fact which did not concern the German forces in the least. Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the occupied eastern territories, bluntly stated in 1941 that the produce of Southern Russian and the Northern Caucasus should be taken to the Reich to feed the German people. He said:
"We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any feelings."
To call such inhuman policy "a harsh necessity" is the acme of understatement. It was deliberate murder by starvation, nothing less. To show that the policy of plunder was not prompted by economic needs alone or the necessity of supplying the German army and population with necessaries, we find that churches, libraries, art galleries and museums, not only in the East but in France, Belgium and Holland, were systematically looted of their treasures. This thievery was ordered, as the decree of Himmler put it, "for the strengthening of Germanism." The connection between the avowed purpose and the crime is not entirely clear. The experience of Prince Max Lobkowicz of Bohemia is typical. In his affidavit (Ex. 733) he states:
"I am the owner of landed property, situated in several districts of Bohemia....Over two-thirds of this property came under German rule in October 1938 as a result of the occupation by the Germans after Munich.
"The rest of my property, including my chief residence at Rondnice and my house at Prague, came under German rule in March 1939, just after I had escaped with my family (wife and 3 sons) to London.
"I remained in the Czechoslovak diplomatic service, which I had entered in 1920, in London and during the war was appointed first Minister and liter Ambassador to the Court of St. James. In February 1947, I was transferred from London to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Prague, to which I am attached now.
"The whole of my property was confiscated by the Germans.
"This confiscation included farm land, forests, vineyards, etc., as well as natural mineral springs, breweries, saw-mills and several large houses, with old family collections (over 100 pictures, furniture, a library of over 100,000 volumes, historical archives, etc.)."
ACTION REINHARDT The extermination and deportation of the Jews in the East produced a vast amount of valuable property, both real and personal, which the Reich was quick to recognize and seize.
To marshal these resources, the Action Reinhardt was instituted, named, appropriately enough, for Reinhardt Heydrich, formerly Chief of the Security Police and SD, who met his death -- and this, too, appropriately enough - in Czechoslovakia in 1942. The purpose of the action was to gather into the Reich all the Jewish manpower and wealth which could be reached. It was an ambitious and profitable undertaking for Germany. The Jews themselves were herded into concentration camps as slaves and their entire worldly possessions confiscated. The real property, where possible, was put to German use (largely through the WVHA agency of OSTI) and the movable property was shipped to WVHA, where it was inventoried and appraised and distributed through prescribed channels. The thoroughness of this program of looting is evidenced by the articles listed: Featherbeds, quilts, blankets, woolen yardage, shawls, umbrellas, cames, thermos bottles, flasks, baby carriages, combs, handbags, belts, pipes, sun glasses, mirrors, table silver, luggage, linens, pillows, eye glasses, furs, watches, clocks and jewelry. Everything that could be lifted was moved. The defendant Frank listed as received up to April 30, 1943, 94,000 men's watches, 33,000 women's watches and 25,000 fountain pens. Currency and precious metals seized reached a total value of 60,000,000 Reichsmarks. About 2,000 carloads of textiles reached Germany as a result of this plunder, and in all a grand total of over 100 million Reichsmarks in personal property was thus acquired. When Jews died in concentration camps, additional loot became available. The clothing was stripped from their bodies and, after being carefully searched for hidden valuables and the distinguishing Jewish star removed, was distributed to still living inmates or to German civilians.
Camp commandants were cautioned not to ship clothing which was stained with blood or showed bullet holes. To complete the desecration, the hair was shorn from the heads of the dead (one report showed a carload of 3,000 kilograms) and all the dental gold was extracted and deposited through WVHA in the vaults of the Reichsbank. It was ordered by the defendant Frank that all property originating from Action Reinhardt be called "goods originating from thefts, receiving of stolen goods, and hoarded goods." In the true sense, this description is more accurate than Frank intended.
In the Southern German Legal Gazette, March 1947, crimes against humanity are defined as acts involving "cruelty against human life, degradation of the dignity of man or destruction of human civilization." The Tribunal is quite content to use this German concept as a standard in deciding whether or not the facts heretofore found constitute crimes against humanity. Only one conclusion is possible. These facts establish beyond a reasonable doubt the wholesale commission of both war crimes and crimes against humanity. It next becomes necessary to determine to what extent, if any, the several defendants are criminally responsible therefore, by reason of actual perpetration, participation or taking a consenting part therein.
A defense which has been almost universally advanced is that all the criminal acts of the Reich were conducted under a cloak of secrecy which prevented the defendants from knowing about them. Hitler's famous secrecy order has been offered by nearly every defendant. It has been urged that there was strict censorship of the press, that listening to foreign broadcasts was prohibited, that concentration camp prisoners were required upon their release to be sworn to secrecy as to events which they had observed or experienced, and that the German people generally were kept in complete ignorance of what was going on. All these facts are true. But in the very nature of things, it was impossible to maintain complete secrecy or anything like it. It was impossible to keep hidden from public view the huge transports which carried the slave laborers from the East to the concentration camps.
It was impossible to keep secret the public demonstrations against the Jews. Streicher's infamous "Der Sturmer" had a circulation of 600,000 copies. Himmler spoke openly about "the final solution of the Jewish problem" at Posen, Cracow and Metz. When prisoners were liberated from concentration camps, it is impossible to think that they maintained the complete secrecy to which they were bound. Soldiers returning on leave from Poland, Russia and the Ukraine must have talked to some extent. The pall of smoke from the crematoria at Auschwitz could not be kept hidden. In spite of decrees, foreign broadcasts were heard. The systematic murder of millions of human beings, extending over five years? could not by reason of its very magnitude be kept secret. It is undoubtedly true that millions of obscure and unimportant German citizens had no way of knowing and did not know of the horrible wrongs which were being perpetrated. But if high-ranking officers of the SS, whose daily tasks for years brought them into immediate contact with the operation of the camps, claim that they had no suspicion of the events occurring within the barbed wire, that defense cannot be believed. Undoubtedly some knew more than others and some limited few knew nothing. With this conclusion Pohl himself agrees. In his interrogation of June 13, 1946 (Ex. 693), Pohl was confronted by Kaltenbrunner's testimony before the International Military Tribunal that "there were only a handful of people in the WVHA who had any control or knew anything about concentration camps," to which Pohl commented:
"Well, that is complete nonsense. I described to you how these were handled in the WVHA. As for instance, in the case of the use of textiles and turning in of valuables, and also from Bluecks and Loerner right on down to the last little clerk, must have known what went on in the concentration camps, and it is complete nonsense for him to speak of just a handful of men."
In Liebehenschel's letter of February 25, 1943, written as Chief of Amtsgruppe D of the WVHA and addressed to all the concentration camp commanders, he states that the population in the East is beginning to be startled by the frequent casualties in the concentration camps. Apparently, in some areas at least, the secret was beginning to leak out.
The Tribunal is convinced that the ignorance professed by many of the defendants is the ignorance of convenience.
At the outset of the testimony, the Tribunal realized the necessity of guarding against assuming criminality, or even culpable responsibility, solely from the official titles which the several defendants held. It became apparent that, in conformity with the ancient German passion for high-sounding titles, many purely ministerial officers, performing perfunctory or even menial tasks, were designated by sonorous names which did not necessarily connote substantial power or authority. In some instances minor officers, engaged in purely routine tasks, were designated on the elaborate tables of organization by lengthy and awe-inspiring titles, which upon closer inspection were found to cover nothing more than a few desks in a remote corner. The Tribunal has been especially careful to discover and analyze the actual power and authority of the several defendants, and the manner and extent to which they were exercised, without permitting itself to be unduly impressed by the official designations on letterheads or office doors.
Court No. II, Case No. IV.
OSWALD POHL Prior to 1934, defendant Pohl was Chief Disbursing Officer of the German Navy.
On a visit by Himmler to the Naval Base at Kiel in 1934, he met Pohl and persuaded him to sever his connection with the Navy and assume an administrative position with the SS Main Office. Pohl had been a member of the National Socialist Party since 1926 and of the SA since 1929. At Himmler's insistence he became Chief of the Administrative Department of the SS Central Office in February 1934. In 1939 that office was organized into two Main Offices under the names "Main Office Budget and Building" and "Main Office Administration and Economy." These offices were in complete charge of all administrative matters affecting the fast-growing SS. On February 1, 1942, these two Main Offices were united and renamed "SS Administrative Main Office," known as "WVHA", to which was also added the Main Office of Inspector of Concentration Camps, which became Amtsgruppe D.
For eleven years Pohl was continuously the administrative head of the entire SS organization. His only superior within his field was Himmler. At the beginning of the war he became a member of the "Freundeskreis" or "Circle of Himmler's Friends," a small select group of intimates who enjoyed Himmler's confidence. As Chief of the WVHA he was in absolute control of an organization composed of 5 amtsgruppen and 28 amts, with a personnel at the peak of over 1700 employees. He not only directed and administered the fiscal affairs of the entire SS but he was in charge of the administrative aspects of all concentration camps and was head of the trememdous industrial empire which the SS built up under Amtsgrupoe W. It is obvious that his duties were not perfunctory or formal but that he was an experienced, active and dominant head of one of the largest branches of the German military machine.
Although he had no actual military duties in the field, he attained the military rank of Obergruppenfuehrer, which is equivalent to the rank of Lieutenant General.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS Three months after the outbreak of the war, Himmler ordered that "the supervision of the economic matters of these institutions and their application to work is the responsibility of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl."
The change in Reich policy by which concentration camps were converted from places of mere detention to places of productive free labor was announced in April 1942, and the ruthless plan of exacting from concentration camp inmates their last once of energy in furtherance of the Reich's war plans became operative. It became Pohl's task to implement this policy and to make it work effectively for the Reich. Neither Pohl nor the WVHA had anything to do with the commitment of inmates to concentration camps nor with their release, except by death. Neither Pohl nor any other member of the WVHA had authority to order the execution of concentration camp prisoners. Nor is there any evidence that he or they attempted to exercise any such prerogative. The order for executions originated between the Secret State Police and Himmler personally. The greater part of the task of procuring inmates fell upon the Security Police and the SD, although it is quite evident that the SS and the Wehrmacht in the field rendered no little assistance. Pohl's jurisdiction began when the inmates reached the gates of the concentration camps. Pohl has contended that the inclusion in WVHA of Amtsgruppe D, which was concerned exclusively with concentration camp matters, was more a formal than an actual subordination and that this amtsgruppe, under Gluecks and Maurer, continued to operate more or less independently of Pohl, taking most of their orders directly from Himmler.
It is probably true to some degree that the heads of Amtsgruppe D, which had formerly been an SS Main Office, resented somewhat their subordination to Pohl and continued to look to Himmler for orders. The fact remains, however, that Pohl, as head of the WVHA, was the superior of Gluecks and Maurer and was in a position to exercise and did exercise substantial supervision and control over Amtsgruppe D. Pohl himself, in his affidavit of April 3, 1947 (Ex. 525), states:
".... Gluecks was Chief of Amtsgruppe D and was subordinate to me in my capacity as Main Office Chief. Thus I became authority for the administration of concentration camps within the sphere of activity of the WVHA. The camp commanders were nominated by the SS Personnel Office on my recommendation and appointed by me."
As chief judicial officer of the SS, he had full disciplinary power over all guards who served in the concentration camps. All judgments arising in disciplinary proceedings against SS guards were submitted to Pohl for modification or confirmation.
One of the purposes in organizing the WVHA was to centralize and concentrate administrative authority and to reduce the number of independent administrative offices. In view of the fact that the SS enterprises administered under Amtsgrupoe W were manned by concentration camp inmates and in many instances operated in concentration camps themselves, it was inevitable that the administrative affairs of the camps should be placed in the hands of Pohl, who was also the head of the enterprises. The camps and the enterprises were so inseparable that a unified control of both had to be fixed, and this control was inposed on Pohl.
Armed with this power, Pohl energetically set about driving the inmates to the limit of endurance in order to further the economic and war efforts of the Reich. In April 1942, he wrote to Himmler:
"The custody of prisoners for the solereasons of security, education or prevention is no longer the main consideration. The mobilization of all prisoners who are fit for work, for purposes of the war now and for purposes of construction in the forthcoming peace, come to the foreground more and more."
In the affidavit of Phillip Grimm (Ex. 298), who in 1942 was Labor Assignment Officer at Sachenhausen and later was transferred to Office D II of WVHA, it is stated:
"Through my activity as Labor Assignment Officer I know that in 1942 an order by Pohl was sent to the Concentration Camps, which authorized the Camp Commanders to retain prisoners who had been released for discharge by the Reich Security Main Office, but were important for the organization of labor in the camp. The duration of this illegal imprisonment could be extended to the end of the war."
To the very end of the war Pohl kept a tight rein on all aspects of concentration camp administration. He constantly fought for longer hours, more intense effort, more production, selection of specialized skills, less loafing, and more strict supervision. As of July 1944 there were 20 concentration camps and 165 labor camps supervised by his Main Office. There was no phase of the administration of these camps in which he was not intensely interested, and this interest manifested itself at times in the smallest details. In some instances he recommended appointments and transfers of camp commanders, who were the slave drivers in the camps. In January 1943, in a letter to all camp commanders, he directed that the working hours of prisoners be kept at 11 hours per day during the winter, 6 days per week, and a half day on Sunday. In May 1941, when he found that half of a shipment of Jews from Hungary were women, he asked Himmler's approval for putting them to work on construction projects. Needless to say, Himmler consented. In December 1943, Pohl wrote to all camp commanders, complaining that SS guards were not urging prisoners to work sufficiently, stating, "Please instruct detachment leaders every Monday on this obvious duty of the guards."
In 1942, Gluecks, Chief of Amtsgruppe D, in writing to the camp commanders, stated that Pohl had ordered that punishment by beating was to be executed by prisoners in concentration camps for men, but that it was forbidden to have foreign prisoners execute the punishment on German prisoners. This letter is significant because it recognizes Pohl's superior authority to issue such an order. If Gluecks enjoyed the degree of independence which Pohl attributes to him, he would have issued this order in person without attributing it to Pohl. On several occasions Pohl's interest led him to inspect concentration camps in person. He visited Ravensbruck, Auschwitz, Dachau and Oranienburg. During his visit to Auschwitz in 1943, Pohl was shown the plans for the enlargement of the camp, including the construction of four new crematoria with modern gas chambers. His solicitude for the inmates led him to order that specially hardworking prisoners be granted additional rations of food and tobacco and permission to patronize the camp brothel. For this last service Pohl fixed the charge and prescribed the method of dividing the income between the female inmates, the woman manager, and the WVHA. He also held periodic conferences with concentration camp commanders in Berlin. It was part of his duty to select new sites for concentration camps and to determine their economic potentialities. When a new camp was proposed, he determined its size and capacity and the number of inmates which would be utilized in it.
There is no need to further elaborate upon the proof on this point although much more could be adduced. From all the evidence, it becomes clear to the Tribunal that Pohl at all times had an intimate and detailed knowledge of happenings in any way connected with the concentration camps. He made it his special business to know these facts. It is futile for him to say that he was not aware of the creatoria when the plans were drawn and the construction supervised in his own organization and he visited the camps where they were installed.
Nearly every Amt Chief testified that he reported frequently to Pohl in person concerning events and problems arising in his immediate sphere. According to his own testimony and correspondence, he kept a running inventory, classified as to nationalities, of the labor supply of inmates in every camp. He knew how many prisoners died; he knew how many were unfit for work; he knew what mass transfers were made from camp to camp. There was doubtless no other one person in Germany who knew as much about all the details of the concentration camps as Pohl. At least this much can be said and cannot be denied, that Pohl knew that hundreds of thousands of men and women had been cast into concentration camps and compelled to work, without remumeration and under the most rigid confinement, for the country which had devastated their homelands and abducted them into bondage. When these slaves died from exhaustion or starvation or from the abuse of the SS overseers, Pohl cannot escape the fact that he was the administrative head of the agency which brought about these tragedies. His was more than a mere consenting part. It was active participation. Leaving all other considerations aside, Pohl stands before this Tribunal as an admitted slave driver on a scale never before known. On this count if no other he is guilty of direct participation in a war crime and a crime against humanity.
The mistreatment of prisoners of war, especially Russian and Polish prisoners, in the concentration camps, must also be laid at the door of Pohl. On September 30, 1944, Martin Bormann, Director of the Party Chancellory, sent out an order from Hitler, which said in part:
"The mobilization of labor of the prisoners of war will be organized with the present labor mobilization office in joint action between SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Berger and SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl."